Advanced search

Advanced search is divided into two main parts, and one or more groups in each of the main parts. The main parts are the "Search for" (including) and the "Remove from search" (excluding) part. (The excluding part might not be visible until you hit "NOT" for the first time.) You can add new groups to both the including and the excluding part by using the buttons "OR" or "NOT" respectively, and you can add more search options to all groups through the drop down menu on the last row (in each group).

For a result to be included in the search result, is it required to fit all added including parameters (in at least one group) and not fit all parameters in one of the excluding groups. This system with the two main parts and their groups makes it possible to combine two (or more) distinct searches into one search result, while being flexible in removing results from the final list.

Dear Harry/Dear Paul – Selling the Concept of European Art Cinema in the 1960s

In a letter written in August 1966 to Harry Schein (1924-2006), head of the Swedish Film Institute, the prominent Hollywood agent Paul Kohner (1902 -1988) asks for advices. He wants to take over the foreign distribution of the leading Swedish film producer Svensk filmindustri (SF), and wants Schein to help him. This letter is picked out from a long-standing correspondence between Schein and Kohner (lasting from 1960 to 1984) on economical matters concerning Swedish cinema in general, especially in relation to the careers of Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Thulin.

The 627 letters exchanged between Schein and Kohner (deposed in the personal archive of Harry Schein) are a source not only to the life and work of ceratin filmmakers and actors. The correspondence can also shed some light on strategies for the promotion of European art cinema in the US in the 1960s. Furthermore, the dialogue between Schein and Kohner represents discourses and attitudes regarding film as an art and as a medium in a time when the different institutions of cinema (criticism, production and governmental subsidies etc.) were changing rapidly.

By the end of the 1940s the Swedish Labour Movement (The Social Democratic Party, the major trade unions, the co-operative union, etc.) owned two film companies – Nordisk Tonefilm and Filmo. Nordisk Tonefilm was for a few years one of the majors within the Swedish film and cinema market, fully integrated with theatres, distribution and production.

Films from Nordisk Tonefilm also gained some international success. Hon dansade en sommar (One Summer of Happiness) directed Arne Mattsson in 1951 makes one example of a worldwide box office hit by the company. It was particular successful in DDR. This was not a coincidence. The Archive of Nordisk Tonefilm (as well as the one of Filmo) bares witness of an intense interaction with Eastern Europe. The two companies exported films to the countries behind the Iron Curtain, participated in festivals like the one in Karlo Vary, and regularly imported films from Soviet, Yugoslavia or other socialist states.

In my paper I give examples of this international interaction during the 1950s, related to the film policy of The Social Democracy of Sweden in general.

19. Elsa Brita Marcussen and Gerd Osten - Two leading film critics in post-war Sweden

Vesterlund, Per

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.

Elsa Brita Marcussen and Gerd Osten - Two leading film critics in post-war Sweden

Per Vesterlund, University of Gävle. Sweden

In the years following World War II, the national Swedish cinema experienced an intense debate on the role that the medium of film should play in the society. Two distinct discursive practices among Swedish film critics can be identified in the period from 1945 to the early 1950s. An intriguing fact is that the two of the most explicit advocates of each camp in this public conversation were women. Gerd Osten (1914-1974, mother of hailed director Suzanne Osten) was an aesthetic and artistic ideal, concentrating her writing on style and thematic features in the work of important auteurs of the time. Elsa Brita Marcussen (1919-2006, daughter of social democratic prime minister Per Albin Hansson) was on the other hand more concerned about the function of film from a sociological point of view, pleading foremost for a national production of documentary film in the tradition of John Grierson, and of fiction films with an overt political tendency. This paper will deal with the writings of Marcusen and Osten respectively, and discuss their position in relation to the otherwise patriarchal sphere of film criticism in the 1940s.

20. National Film Policy as a Media Event

Vesterlund, Per

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.

The Swedish “film reform” of 1963 – i.e. the founding of the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) and the national system of film subsidies – has generally been associated with changes in the strategies of national film production, or with a more general institutionalization of national film culture and art cinema values.

The effects and the political principles of the reform are well known. Less attention has been paid to study the overwhelming media coverage of the film reform. This was not at least due to the celebrity impact of Harry Schein, the first chief executive of the SFI and also the architect of the actual reform. The new film policy made headlines, and the doings of Schein was throughout the 1960s a recurrent topic in newspapers, radio and TV. The film policy was synonymous with Swedish modernity, but also frequently attacked. SFI was a place for elegance, scandals and political progression.

In this paper I will discuss these hitherto less studied medial dimensions of the Swedish film reform of 1963.

In 1971 the Head of The Swedish Film Institute, Harry Schein, was given the task by the Ministries of Education to make an official governmental investigation on new audiovisual technologies. Influenced by mainly contemporary Canadian research (official reports like Instant World, 1971), Schein turned the investigation to focus on new telecommunication technology, cable television, pay television and satellite broadcasting. The investigation resulted in the book Inför en ny mediepolitik (“Heading a New Media Politics”) in 1972, where Schein described advanced technical solutions for the distribution of television that already existed, but also predicted a revolving future. Audiovisual media would challenge printed media, and an upcoming broadband technology would transform interpersonal as well as official communications. Mass media was, according to Schein, a phenomenon of the 20th century. The global village described by Marshal McLuhan would be succeeded by “the city of thousand ghettos”, a metaphor borrowed from Instant World. Schein suggested in his investigation that a national media politics would have to make common solutions for film, radio, television, telecommunications and printed media.

This paper will focus on the intense public debates over new technologies and national media politics that the book initiated.

24. Quality in the Welfare State

Vesterlund, Per

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.

This short article is a brief introduction to a document from the archive ofHarry Schein (1924-2006), without question one of the most influential Swedish film and media politicians in the late twentieth century. In the reprinted document Schein and a number of prominent filmmakers, politicians and intellectuals make an appeal for a new quality-based film subsidy. The early date of the document (1951) suggests that the process that preceded the Swedish film reform of 1963 (where Schein as head of Swedish Film Institute was pivotal) was longer and more complex than previuosly noted.

25. Searching the origin of the Swedish “quality film”

Vesterlund, Per

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.

Searching the origin of the Swedish “quality film” – The forgotten film critic Harry Schein and the national institution of art cinemaHarry Schein (1924-2006) was one of the most influential Swedish film and media politicians in the late 20th century. Gaining fame as the founder of the Swedish film institute (SFI) in 1963, Schein had also as leading film critic been a pivotal figure in the national film culture in the post-war years. His political work (head of SFI, head of National Investment Bank, etc.) and his frequent interaction with well-known names from the public/political sphere and the cultural field (Ingrid Thulin, Ingmar Bergman, Olof Palme etc.) strengthened his status as a celebrity, while making his achievement as a critic a forgotten part of his CV. As a major advocate of the concept ”quality film” – a central value in the discourse of national art cinema – Scheins criticism of the 1950s is a potential source when studying the official Swedish film politics from 1960 and onwards. This paper will deal with Scheins generally declared views on film criticism, as well as with his writing on contemporary films.Key words: Film criticism, national film politics, quality film, art cinema,References: Bordwell, David, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, Mass & London, England: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989) Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face With Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005) Staiger, Janet, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Reception of American Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition, ed. Andrew Nestingen & Trevor G. Elkington (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005) Vesterlund, Per ” Drömmen om verkligheten – filmkritikern Harry Schein” i Citizen Schein: Texter om och av Harry Schein, ed. Lars Ilshammar, Pelle Snickars & Per Vesterlund (Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, Kungliga biblioteket, 2010)

26. "Stoppa kabel-TV!"

Vesterlund, Per

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.

Harry Schein (1924–2006) is without question one of the most influential Swedish film and media politicians. His most famous achievement was the major Swedish film reform of 1963, when the state and the film industry came to an agreement on the financing and administration of a new film subsidy. The process that preceded the Swedish film reform of 1963 was longer and more complex than is usually noted. In the article this process is described and investigated through two interwoven narratives: one deals with the institutional and cultural conditions that preceded the reform, the other with the role of Harry Schein in the process. This is accomplished in the article by focusing on Harry Schein’s own writings and activities in the area of film politics from 1946 to 1962; the time when the film reform was initiated.

28. Introduction

Vesterlund, Per

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities, Film studies.